Making A Pomander-Without Floral Foam

A floral pomander, or kissing ball is a basically a ball of flowers that is carried on a ribbon “strap” like a purse. Normally, we would use a little floral foam ball, soaked in water, filled with flowers with a ribbon attached.

The end result would look something like this.

To tackle this design challenge, I first posted a note on the Flower Farmers facebook group. This is a relatively new group made up of flower farmers, designers and enthusiasts. My post elicited lots of suggestions and comments which was super helpful. I was surprised and how many people had tried inventive, creative ways to make pomanders.

I took the ideas to the studio with me and posed the challenge to Carling and Irene. Our idea was basic-find something round that we could poke flowers into or glue flowers to.

This hodge podge group of materials represents some of the items we tried: an apple, a tulip bulb, a ball of boxwood rigged together and a wired ball of moss.

After a couple attempts, we settled on a little ball of crumpled up soft, aluminum wire stuffed with moss. we then used oasis floral glue to glue the ranunculus on to the moss.

The end result looked great!

For improvements, I think we would try to just use a ball of moss or something that could be totally composted. Overall though, I think we were excited about the results.

If anyone else has made pomanders without using floral foam, I’d love to hear about your experience and any suggestions you have for floral foam free projects.